How often do you use your slow cooker? If you’re anything like us, you’re happy to use it any time you don’t want to put much effort into cooking dinner. There’s something so nice about being able to throw in a bunch of raw ingredients, close the lid and come back to a fully cooked meal six or eight hours later. As everybody probably knows, slow cookers are incredibly versatile as well. Although you can use them to make chilis, baked goods and even meat-based roasts, you can also use them to make some pretty delicious soup.
Today, it’s the latter kind of recipe that we’re going to focus on. If you’ve never had this before, this recipe for slow cooker potato soup is a perfect creamy comfort food that you’ll want to come back to again and again. The preparation is incredibly easy and the results are sure to keep you and your family satisfied. And did we mention that this recipe uses bacon as well? Let’s get started.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- 10 slices of cooked bacon, diced
- 3 cups of chicken broth
- 2 pounds of peeled and diced Yukon gold potatoes
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 6 minced garlic cloves
- 1 tablespoon of dried parsley
- 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter
- 1/3 cup of all-purpose flour
- 1 12-ounce can of evaporated milk (or half-and-half)
- 2 cups of shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1/2 cup of sour cream
- salt
- pepper
- chives (optional)
- extra cheese (optional)
- extra bacon bits (optional)
Here’s what you do:
1. To get started, make sure you prepare all your ingredients by peeling, dicing and chopping whatever needs to be prepped. When you’re ready, add your diced potatoes, diced onions, bacon parsley and chicken broth into the slow cooker. Add some salt and pepper and stir everything up until it’s well-combined. Cover it up and let it cook on low for six to eight hours or on high for three to four hours. Check that the potatoes are fork tender when the time is up.
2. After that’s done, get a saucepan going over medium heat and add some butter to it. Let it melt and whisk in flour as well until they combine completely. Add your evaporated milk (or whatever dairy product you’re using) and keep whisking everything up until it turns smooth. Turn the heat down to its lowest setting and keep cooking the mixture until it simmers and gets thicker, still stirring periodically.
3. When it’s done, pour the mix into the slow cooker and stir everything up once more to combine it all. After that’s in there, use a potato masher to mash up about 3/4 of the potatoes.
4. Next, pour in your shredded cheese and sour cream. Stir everything together again until it’s all creamy and well-combined. Give it a taste and add salt and pepper as you see fit. Finally, cover the soup again and let it cook on low for 30 minutes or on high for 15. Once the time’s up, you’re ready to eat!
As you can see, making this recipe is incredibly easy—all you have to do is wait for all the ingredients to combine into the perfect creamy soup. Though this soup is delicious just the way it is, you can pump it up a little bit you want to experiment with the kind of cheese you put in… perhaps a smoky, shredded provolone or gruyere would do the trick? Above all, enjoy the process and let us know how it goes!
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